Children of the Earth (11 page)

14

T
HAT LUNA SURE WAS SO
METHING
else. Doug had wanted a piece of her ever since he first laid eyes on her at that bonfire back at the track, the night that . . . well, he preferred not to think about that night, at least not about what had happened later. He preferred not to think about any of the craziness with Janie, and so instead he thought about Luna’s hips, the way they kept that hoop of hers going round and round and what they might feel like swiveling like that against him. The image made his mouth go dry, but he fixed that by chugging the watery remains of his Coors.

“Gonna need another one a’ these.” He crushed the can against his chest and tossed it in the general direction of the bar. “Who wants to buy the boss a beer?”

“You mean the boss’s son,” Dwayne grumbled next to him. “And you’re the one with the cash, so shouldn’t you be buying?”

“I’ll get next,” Doug assured him.

Dwayne, rolling his eyes, fished a few bills from the pocket of his oil-splattered Carhartts and headed to the bar.

He was all right, that Dwayne. In fact, most of the roughnecks were. Sure, they weren’t the best-looking bunch, and they didn’t exactly come from pedigreed stock, but they worked hard, drank harder, and always laughed at his jokes. Which actually meant a hell of a lot, now that Bryce and his buddies from high school had all turned into boring church freaks whose idea of a good time was throwing back a few Cokes and singing songs about Jesus.

Dwayne returned with a pair of sweating tallboys, and Doug clinked appreciatively. “To cold beer and hot women!” he toasted, eliciting a round of guffaws. Almost as if she’d been summoned, Luna squatted low on her platform, still swinging that hoop above her head, and favored Doug with a salacious wink.

“Aw, shit!” Doug looked around to make sure the guys saw. “Did you see that? She winked right at me!”

“She coulda been winking at any of us,” argued Sid, whose heavy forehead and protruding eyebrows reminded Doug of a Cro-Magnon man from one of those Nat Geo documentaries.

“Nope.” Doug shook his head forcefully, enjoying the way it felt like he was shaking his brain cells loose. “She looked dead at me. I know she wants it. She’s always giving me looks like that.”

“The hell she is,” Sid snorted. “She works for tips, and she knows you’re good for ’em. That’s all.”

A bubble of anger rose in Doug’s throat, messy and bilious from the half dozen beers and handful of shots he’d already downed. “Shows what you know,” he spat. “She happens to run this place, so tips ain’t the half of it. She looks at me like that ’cause she wants it. They all do.”

He looped his thumbs around his belt buckle and hiked it up a notch, just in case Sid’s Cro-Magnon brain was too dense to know what “it” was.

His rig buddies howled. “Sure they do, champ,” someone said.

“You’re a regular ladies’ man,” another chimed in.

The back of Doug’s neck grew hot, and he looked from the rig workers to Luna, hoping she’d choose that moment to prove them wrong. As if reading his thoughts, she locked her gaze on his, gave her hips an extra shimmy, and blew him a kiss.

“See?” he exploded. “She’s been giving me signals like that for weeks! I bet I could get with her tonight, no questions asked.”

Dwayne chuckled. “That’s a wager I’m willing to take,” he said. “Whatcha want to bet?”

It may have looked like harmless flirtation to anyone else, but Doug could tell from the passion sparking in Luna’s eyes that this was the real thing. This was gonna happen—and it was gonna happen tonight.

“A Benjamin,” he said confidently.

“Hell,” Dwayne said. “Make it two.”

“You’re on.” Doug wiped his palm on his jeans before grasping Dwayne’s in a hearty handshake.

“Hey, man, how’ll we know you really did the deed?” someone asked.

“What, you don’t trust me?” He gave them a wounded look, his voice dripping with false innocence.

“Not as far as I can throw you.” Dwayne grinned.

“I’ll take a picture. Of her.” Doug lowered his voice to a conspiratorial growl.
“Naked.”

“Damn!” the rig workers cried, laughing and slapping him on the back. Doug felt like a king: back on top, right where he belonged. By the next morning he’d have claimed the finest piece of tail in Carbon County and earned the undying respect of his coworkers in the bargain.

“Just need one more shot and I’ll make this shit happen,” Doug proclaimed, flagging down a cocktail waitress. As he ordered a fireball, he caught a flash of blond hair and a fuchsia shirt that looked exactly like one Janie used to have. In fact, the woman leaving the bar with some surfer-looking dude’s arm over her shoulder could have been a dead ringer for Janie, at least from the back.

A small, cold fist of remorse socked him in the stomach. He was a married man, after all, and Janie wasn’t doing so good as it was. He knew he was practically the only thing she still had to live for. Hell, he’d been the best thing in her life even before all the bad stuff went down. It would kill her to know that he cheated.

“Your shot?” The waitress handed him a glass and he tipped it back gratefully, hoping it would burn away the guilt. What Janie didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, he rationalized. And with Janie in zombie mode half the time, it wasn’t like she’d get suspicious and go asking questions. He’d just have a little fun with Luna, just this once, and then he’d go back to being a good husband.

At least, he’d try.

“You gonna do this or what, pal?”

Doug turned to find his buddies practically bursting with booze and excitement. He couldn’t let them down. If he did, they would never let
him
live it down. Janie or no Janie, he had to finish what he’d started.

“Damn right.” He slammed his shot glass down on a table and started for the go-go platform. “Time to go work my magic.”

“Yeah, Mr. Smooth,” Dwayne agreed. “You do that.”

Doug could hear them laughing behind him and feel the shot still burning in his gut as he approached Luna’s go-go platform. He didn’t have a plan, exactly, but he didn’t think he’d need one. He’d just hop up there, give her the ol’ Varley charm, and she’d be eating out of his palm in no time.

He stopped for a moment, inches from the platform, and stared. Luna was even sexier up close. Her legs were sculpted bronze, her hair a serpent’s nest of color that Doug would find revolting on anyone else, but it was somehow totally hot on her. He could practically smell sex seeping from her pores, inviting him to an all-you-can-eat buffet of pleasure that, to be honest, would probably be the best he’d ever had.

Because, okay, the truth was he’d never been with anyone but Janie. And even though Janie knew what she was doing, she was still just a kid. Luna may not have been any older, but she was a woman: a woman who Doug was pretty damn sure knew how to please a man.

As the song dipped into a hard, driving beat, he placed a hand on the platform and leapt up behind her, ready to grind his way to a home run.

But he’d forgotten about her hoop. It whipped around her head and smacked him across the cheek, making him yelp like a kicked puppy and clutch his face, almost falling off the platform. He could feel his coworkers’ jeers as he struggled to regain his balance, which he found just in time for Luna to turn to him, one hand on her jutting hip.

“And just what do you think you’re doing?” She raised a provocative eyebrow.

“Hey.” Doug spread his hands, hoping he looked bashful and charming. “No disrespect. Just wanted to get to know you a little better, that’s all. Forgot about how hoops . . . well, go around.” He chuckled manfully at his little pun.

Luna cocked her head, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “And how do you propose to get to know me, big guy?”

Doug knew it. He was in. It was all he could do not to turn around and flash a
V
-for-
victory
sign to his boys.

“Like this.” He grabbed her hips and pressed his body against hers, moving the two of them to the music as one. Being so close to her was intoxicating. A spicy, earthy scent rose from her skin, and her hips were liquid gold under his hands, making his breath come quick and heavy. “I think we could have a real good time together,” he growled in her ear. “Don’t tell me you don’t want this, too.”

Revulsion flashed across Luna’s face. Clasping her hands like iron cuffs around his wrists, she lifted his arms off of her and yanked him around so he teetered on the edge of the platform, a solid arm’s length away. She was stronger than she looked, he realized, and as her nails dug into his wrists, she fixed him with a gaze sharp and jagged as broken glass.

“How dare you tell me what I want,” she hissed.

“Whoa, baby, hey . . .” Doug started to say.

“That is not how this works,” Luna continued. “
You
do what
I
want. Not the other way around. Now are you going to do what I want?”

She took a deep breath, and her eyes fluttered shut. A moment later they flew open, and an indigo light began to hover around her head like a halo, growing until it was larger than the disco ball hanging from the ceiling and twice as bright. Doug felt the light surround him, a cloud of brilliant blue. It dulled the music until there was nothing but the sound of blood pounding in his head, and then he felt it start to seep through his skin like a damp fog, creeping into his mind and burrowing deep in the crevices of his brain.

“You wanted me.” Luna’s voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a long tunnel. He blinked through the indigo fog, and it parted just enough to reveal her standing with her hands on her hips. She seemed bigger than the entire bar then, and brighter than the sun. She was magnificent in a way he was only beginning to understand, and he suddenly felt embarrassed for trying to get with her. Luna was clearly not the kind of girl you got with. She was the kind of girl you worshipped.

“And that means you will do what I want,” she continued. “Understand?”

He nodded dumbly. Her voice tickled the furthest reaches of his brain. He felt it cascade through his veins, running through him like blood. She was inside of him, filling him with her glowing blue light.

His feet were rooted to the spot, his limbs frozen. His mind felt like it was stuck in traffic, with Luna in the driver’s seat, navigating his thoughts. She could see all of him, his past and future, memories and desires, and he was powerless to stop her. Not only that, but he didn’t want to.

It felt good to succumb to her, to be filled with her pulsing, calming glow. With Luna as his navigator he didn’t have to be on his guard, trying to impress his father and the guys from the rig, worrying about Janie and wondering what the hell happened to his buddies from high school. He could take a break from the pressures of the world and just float. Just be.

“You’ll do what I want?” she asked again.

“Yes,” he found himself saying. He would do anything for her. He felt closer to her than he’d ever felt to Janie, to Trey, even to his mother while he was still in the womb. Luna owned him completely, and it felt so good to let her be in control, to simply let go.

Luna raised her head to the DJ booth. “Cut the music,” she called. The bar quieted instantly, and Doug felt every head turn to look at him, sensed the mirth in their eyes. But he could only look at Luna, squinting into the indigo light to take in all of her, his retinas refusing to focus anywhere else. He’d be perfectly content to never look at anything else again.

“I have an announcement to make.” Luna’s voice was harps and angels. “This young man is going to lick my boots.”

A tidal wave of laughter crashed through the bar, the loudest hoots and hollers coming from Dwayne and the boys. He heard it, but it meant nothing, the way everything meant nothing, everything but Luna. She was his whole world now, a bigger and more beautiful world than anything he’d experienced before.

“Well,” she said, releasing his hands. “What are you waiting for?”

One of the busboys brought over a barstool, and Luna perched on top of it, above the crowd, where everyone could see. She stuck out her foot, sole facing Doug, as the cheering grew louder.

There was no question in Doug’s mind. This was what Luna wanted, and it was what he would do. The indigo light guided him to his knees, and he cupped her ankle in his hands as reverently as if it were the Holy Grail.

Luna’s boots were weathered imitation leather, the rubber soles two inches thick and molded into deep treads that seemed almost designed to trap dirt. Small gravel pebbles and even a cigarette butt poked out from the grooves, and the treads were worn in places and caked with grime, a graying wad of pink chewing gum winking at him from the left heel. As he drew his head closer he smelled oil and industrial cleanser, urine and dog shit.

“Lick it, lick it, lick it!” the crowd chanted, egging him on. But it wasn’t for them that he stuck out his tongue and gave her foot a long, slow, thorough lick from heel to toe. It was for her.

He was aware of the bar’s collective gasp, could hear the exhalations of disgust and even a few gagging noises, but they meant nothing. His tongue was on her heel again, wiggling into the crevices between treads, scraping against the detritus left there. He licked her soles over and over again, as enthusiastic as if her grimy boots were triple-butterscotch ice cream. It wasn’t that he thought they tasted good—he knew they didn’t. It was simply that his taste buds, his body, his soul no longer mattered. Every cell of him existed only to serve Luna, and this was what Luna wanted.

He realized dimly that the chant had broken off, and an uncomfortable silence hovered in the room. Even Luna, whose eyes he checked between each long, slow slurp, looked unnerved.

“Okay, you can stop already,” she said with a small, silvery laugh. She yanked her feet away from him, looping them around the legs of the stool, and the indigo glow that had surrounded her abruptly vanished. Doug felt the light leak out of him, leaving him sick and dizzy, blinking rapidly into a crowd that was looking at him very differently than when he’d approached the go-go platform just minutes before.